He answered the phone and was told to go to a higher floor. That's how they killed the “ghost”

Shukr was killed when an Israeli rocket hit his apartment in a block of flats in the Dahiye district in southern Beirut.. For his safety, the man almost never left the building, wandering between the second floor, where his office was, and the seventh, where he lived.

On the evening of July 30, Shukr received a phone call ordering him to move to an upper floor, where he died, WSJ wrote based on sources in Hezbollah. It added that the call was most likely made by someone who “infiltrated the group's internal communications network.”

The terrorist's wife and four other people, two women and two children, were also killed in the attack, while 70 others were injured, Lebanese authorities said.

Hezbollah and its supporters Iran are still investigating the death of Shukr, but according to the newspaper's source, the attack was possible due to technological superiority Israelwhich breached the group's counterintelligence security.

Shukr, who had been a member of Hezbollah since the 1980s, was involved in developing advanced weapons and was involved in numerous attacks against Israel. He was also wanted by authorities USA for masterminding the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 American and 58 French soldiers.

An Israeli military statement issued after his death explained that Shukr was also personally responsible for recent attacks on Israel, including the shelling of the Golan Heights on July 27, in which 12 children and teenagers were killed.

Controlling the South Lebanon Hezbollah has been regularly shelling northern Israel since the beginning of the Gaza war in the fall of 2023 to aid Hamas. The airstrikes have been met with Israeli counterattacks. Tens of thousands of civilians have been evacuated on both sides of the border. The shelling alone has killed more than 500 people on the Lebanese side, mostly Hezbollah fighters, and dozens of people, civilians and soldiers, on the Israeli side.

The day after Shukr's death, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack in Tehran. Iran and Hamas blamed Israel for the attack, but Israel has not confirmed its role. Both Tehran and its allied groups, Hezbollah and Hamas, have vowed harsh retaliation.

The Israeli army is kept on heightened alert. In anticipation of the announced Iranian attack, the US and other Western countries are pushing for a reduction in tensions and trying to discourage Iran from retaliating, fearing that a series of mutual blows could even lead to a regional war.